


Anabasis

by goblindaughter



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: Death's a state of mind.





	

Death is an infinite, folded moment. Death is a hall of mirrors. Death is darkness and dirt in your lungs, roots in your ribcage. Death is a sun of pain beneath your ribs

again  
and again  
and again

Death’s a state of mind.

\--

First to come back: _little latter-day Hippolyta I’ll eat her heart and make her sisters watch._

Next: sight, breath. Locket gone. Awareness of the earth around you, the humming molecular-level corruption of the open Gate.

Head all ablur, you think _outoutout_

Elsewhere.

\--

Death’s a state of mind. Clinging, persistent. You feel quite the sleepwalker, mind a scattered jigsaw, a broken sword with a missing hilt. A clip-winged bird trying to fly.

Sequence of events: underestimated little Danny. Underestimated Maman. (Again. You simply must stop doing that. It’s unhealthy.) Died. More Gates have opened now--time is passing, slipways, sideways. Or you’re slipways and sideways. Yes, that sounds far more accurate.

Someone--not Maman, someone else; perhaps he-of-the-book--once told you that death was simply losing the ability to manifest on a particular plane, and the rest is frippery. You see the argument, but are disinclined to agree; the frippery has you inside-down and upside-out, and you’re not sure when that will pass. If that will pass.

(You knew, of course, that this was a possibility when you carved the spell on your heart. You just didn’t think it was one you’d ever need to experience at the time.)

\--

The world become clearer, now. You know things. Or remember things that you always knew, perhaps, and were made to forget. Life’s a state of mind, too, as limiting in its way as death. Now that you’ve danced on that boundary, you are far more open.

(Ereshkigal. The name that sings.)

Open enough to know that there’s no move you can make against Maman alone. This isn’t what you’d call a position of power. And you never negotiate from the low ground. In fact, you know better than to negotiate with dear Maman at all.

The words _good faith_ have never, after all, applied to either of you. There’s no reason things should be different now, is there?

But your little kitten, sister-dearest, Mircalla anagrammed times ten, and sweet stubborn little Nellie Bly...

Oh, there are so many _possibilities_. They just need a little nudge.

\--

Ereshkigal. Irkalla. Lady of the Great Below, queen of the dead, queen of the night.

_Open the gate that I may enter! If thou openest not the gate, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock. I will bring up the dead to eat the living, and the dead will outnumber the living!_

The First Gate wants the rook.

You know this. You know all this. Yes, you do.

\--

You have known more. You will know more. Soon and very soon will your thoughts return to order, not like soldiers in a line, as they once were, but like an ever-expanding ever-pulsing fractal. As they once were. As they were meant to be. Yes.

The crown will reclaim its queen. Queen of the night, queen of the dead, Lady of the Great Below. Irkalla. _Ereshkiga_ l.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A Theory: gosh, sure is a heaping coincidence that Mattie teleports back in after they did the ritual, isn't it? Maybe I'm totally wrong, but maybe SOMEBODY imprisoned her sister in a mortal body, and maybe that body getting killed changed some things... (Also, you get one (1) internet cookie if you can spot my obscure fantasy reference.(


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